The Summer Palace

Today we took a trip to the New Summer Palace (Yiheyuan), which is only fifteen or twenty minutes by bus or taxi away from where we live in Beijing at Beijing Foreign Studies University. The Summer Palace we visited, and the one most tourists encounter, is the "New Summer Palace," as opposed to the older one that was, according to my Fodor's "China" guidebook, "looted and systematically blown up byBritish and French soldiers" in 1860 (25). The three guidebooks I'm following ("Let's Go: China," Fodor's "China," and the "Insight City Guide: Beijing") differ in their histories about the Old Summer Palace, so I'm going to forgo discussion of Yuanmingyuan, the older palace now in ruins, until I can sort out what is accurate. The guidebooks agree, however, that the New Summer Palace was its replacement, built in the 1880s and used by the Dowager Empress Cixi. It is stunning and huge, a visual feast, made up of many courtyards, pavillions, long covered corridors that line a lake (we took a boat out to the Seventeen-Arch Bridge) and gardens. Most of it seems to have been recently restored, although we were not able to climb up to the very highest part of the Palace. I'll let the students say more about the Summer Palace and use what they have to say next week, but everyone took stunning photos.
Above you see, as promised, photos of the girls. Here are three of the four, Natalia, Vicky, and Jackie.